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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25871224">Dead Letter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynder2013/pseuds/Cynder2013'>Cynder2013</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Like Father, Like Daughter [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Bones (TV), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV), The Dresden Files - Jim Butcher</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Case Fic, Dark Magic, Forensics, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Magic-Users, Murder, Necromancy, POV First Person, POV Third Person, Past Drug Use, Past Tense, Post-Dead Beat, Post-Episode: s07e22 Chosen, Swearing, Violence, Witches, Wizards</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-03-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 08:34:59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>14,635</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25871224</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cynder2013/pseuds/Cynder2013</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was a corpse in a magic circle on a grave. Of course Murphy called me. I just didn't expect for the new Watchers Council and the FBI to get involved in this one too.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Like Father, Like Daughter [4]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1671559</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>29</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Harry Dresden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>I, Harry Dresden, am an idiot. I’d spent nearly two hours in the Blue Beetle with Lauren and Spike driving from Madison, Wisconsin back to Chicago, and I’d heard enough about Spike before then to realize that letting him and my brother Thomas meet was a bad idea. And what did I do? I introduced them.</p><p>I repeat: I, Harry Dresden, am an idiot.</p><p>Thomas and Spike were sitting at my kitchen table drinking from bottles of Mac’s ale while they did their best to make me die of embarrassment. They’d started swapping stories almost an hour before and showed no sign of stopping any time soon.</p><p>“So he said ‘I thought you were getting sacrificed’ and then Lauren said ‘Is that why you tried to set us on fire?’” Spike smirked and took a sip of his ale while Thomas laughed.</p><p>“You weren’t even there when that happened,” I muttered into my own bottle.</p><p>I looked across the table to where my dog Mouse (he was a lot smaller when I named him) was playing tug-of-war with my mathematically improbable daughter. Lauren stumbled when Mouse gave the rope toy a particularly enthusiastic yank and landed on the rug-covered floor, which gave Mouse the opportunity to pounce on her and lick her face.</p><p>“Stories get passed around the Council real quick,” Spike said. “Some of the girls compared it to high school.” He was also watching Mouse and Lauren, who was giggling as she tried to fend off the attack of doggy kisses. A look I couldn’t quite read passed over his face. Worry, maybe. I knew that he cared about my daughter, anyone who’d seen their interactions on the drive over could have figured that out, and she wasn’t in the healthiest place at the moment. To put it bluntly, she was high off the earth magic that the witches of the Slayers, Guardians and Watchers Council had used to save the world and could have decided to start throwing around powerful magic at the drop of a hat. Spike had said something about being the only babysitter whose heart she couldn’t stop and I wasn’t keen to find out exactly what that meant.</p><p>“Sounds like high school,” Thomas agreed.</p><p>“Did you even go to high school?” I asked. Thomas was a White Court vampire, one of the several flavours of vampire in the world. His family, the Raiths, fed on lust. They weren’t born that way, and they weren’t told that they’d eventually have a perpetual Hunger living inside them, but it did seem like it would be a little awkward to go to school with hormonal teenagers when most of your family worked in the porn industry.</p><p>Seriously, I met Lara Raith on the set of an adult film. She’s very popular in some circles.</p><p>“Private school,” Thomas said. Of course. Still awkward, but more in line with Raith tastes.</p><p>Spike tilted his head back and drained his drink. “You getting tired yet, niblet?”</p><p>Lauren hopped to her feet. “I’m not tired. Can we go on patrol?”</p><p>Mouse whined. Spike and I winched. Patrolling, what the SGWC called patrolling, was basically wandering around looking for trouble. Running into trouble with an unstable witch would not end well. Luckily for us and at least half of Chicago, Lauren almost immediately stopped smiling and got a confused look on her face. A second later she was sprawled on the floor, fast asleep.</p><p>Spike sighed. “About time. It’s only been three bloody days.” He got up and moved Lauren to the couch. Mouse padded after him and gave a great big doggie yawn before curling up on the floor next to her. Man, did that looked like a good idea. It’s amazing how you can feel wide awake until someone yawns. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that it had to be getting close to midnight.</p><p>I drank the last of my beer and stood. “I’m going to head to bed. If you destroy my apartment I’m billing you for it.”</p><p>Thomas flashed a dazzling grin. “Who, us? Never.”</p><p>I didn’t bother to dignify that with a reply.</p>
<hr/><p>I was woken up in the morning by the sound of my phone ringing. I groaned. There weren’t tiny little dwarfs with hammers and pickaxes working away inside my skull, but the late night drinking hadn’t done me any favours. I crawled out of bed and pulled a T-shirt over my head. Mister meowed grumpily as I took away his personal heater, curled up in the spot I had vacated and went back to sleep. Cats, am I right?</p><p>By the time I’d made my way into the main room of my apartment, Thomas had already answered the phone. Despite the fact that he’d either slept on the floor or at the table since Lauren and Spike were occupying the only comfortable pieces of furniture, he looked like he’d stepped out of a photo shoot. Seeing as it was five in the morning, I didn’t bother trying not to hate him for it.</p><p>“He just stepped into the room,” Thomas said. “Hold on a minute.” He covered the mouthpiece of my rotary phone with one hand. “It’s Karrin.”</p><p>I took the phone from him. “Morning, Murphy. What’s up?”</p><p>The voice of Karrin Murphy, head of Special Investigations at Chicago P.D., came over the phone, sounding tinny and distant, which was probably my fault considering the anti-technology field we wizards tend to carry around with us. “What’s up is body in a circle of occult symbols on top of a grave in Graceland. We need you here before the press.”</p><p>I winced. Graceland Cemetery is a pretty famous plot of land with some important people buried there. A murder there would definitely get a lot of attention. “I’ll be there in five.”</p><p>“Don’t have breakfast,” Murphy said flatly before hanging up. That wasn’t a good sign.</p><p>I hung up the phone and turned to Thomas, who was rummaging through the ice box. “I’m heading to Graceland. Let Lauren and Spike know.”</p><p>“No need, mate,” Spike said from right behind me.</p><p>I jumped and spun around. Spike grinned. I’m not sure if silently sneaking up on people was something the SGWC taught all its operatives or if it was something that came with being Spike’s kind of vampire. Unlike Thomas, Spike wasn’t a White Court supermodel. He was a literal bloodsucking demon from the Aurelius line of the loosely organized Blood Clans. They’re so loosely organized that no one can actually agree if they signed the Unseelie Accords or not. Based on Spike, I tended to go with “not”.</p><p>“Sure, give me a heart attack,” I muttered.</p><p>Spike clapped a hand on my shoulder. “You’re alright. Best head out before your lady gets angry.”</p><p>I didn’t bother to ask how long he’d been listening to Murphy’s call.</p>
<hr/><p>There weren’t any people with cameras around Graceland when I arrived, despite the police cars in the parking lot. That wouldn’t last long. Reporters are like freaking bloodhounds when it comes to bodies, I swear.</p><p>The officer standing by one of the cars was one I recognized but couldn’t name. It had been a few months since I’d last worked with Special Investigations, so she must have recently reached the limit of trouble she was allowed to cause in another department and gotten booted down to SI. It used to be that SI was where cop careers went to die. That’d changed with Murphy in charge. Whatever that officer had done, she stood a good chance of having a long career that would mostly involve lying on official paperwork.</p><p>“Harry Dresden?” the officer asked.</p><p>“Present,” I said. Not up to my usual levels of eloquence, but I was hungry and hungover. I had to save my energy for the job Murphy had called me there to do.</p><p>The officer pointed into the trees. “They’re just down that way. You can’t miss it.”</p><p>“Murphy said it was bad,” I said.</p><p>The officer grimaced. “You can’t miss it,” she repeated. “Even though you’ll really wish you had.”</p><p>That made it twice that I’d been warned about the state of the crime scene. Considering that I’d seen people torn apart by werewolves and had a case where people had their hearts literally burst out of their chests, I was starting to worry that this one would be really bad.</p><p>Murphy was standing under a tree just off the path that wove deeper into the cemetery. Police tape starting a few feet away enclosed about two dozen headstones ranging from obelisks to stones that barely rose above the blades of grass. It was an area I knew pretty well. We were only a few rows away from my grave.</p><p>“Harry,” Murphy said in lieu of greeting.</p><p>“Murphy,” I replied. “What happened?”</p><p>Murphy sighed. “I’ll show you. Come on.”</p><p>I followed Murphy under the police tape. The body was lying on one of the graves with a knee-high headstone in the middle of the area that had been cordoned off. I assumed that the burnt grass around it was the circle that Murphy had mentioned. Murphy and I stopped a few feet away. I stared at the body for a few minutes, trying to process what I was seeing.</p><p>“Where’s his skin?” I asked.</p><p>“That’s what I’d like to know,” Murphy said.</p><p>The body was lying on its side with its feet pointed towards us. All of the muscles right below the skin were exposed.</p><p>Yeah, this one was bad.</p><p>“Did you get pictures already?” I asked. Murphy nodded.</p><p>I got closer. The muscles were red and wet looking, almost shimmering in the early dawn light. There was a stab wound just below the shoulders that exposed parts of a rib and the spine. There was more bone visible on the head, places where muscle stopped and fat should have begun. The face had been ripped away. The lips had been removed especially thoroughly. I could see teeth.</p><p>“Hell's bells,” I muttered. “That’s...wow.” Poor Vivian Kathrine Lake, Beloved Wife and Mother couldn’t have imagined what her grave site would go through.</p><p>Most of the burnt areas around the body looked like they were part of a circle. I got out the paper and pencil I’d stuffed into one of the pockets of my duster on my way out the door and started drawing the bits of it that I could see. The circle appeared to have two layers, the inner ring where the body lay and the outer ring that contained most of the aforementioned occult symbols. The symbols were actually writing. They usually are. It’s just that most people don’t learn to read the languages that are commonly used in magic, Latin being the major exception. One of the languages used in the circle was either Sumerian or Akkadian; they use the same writing system. Whoever made the circle had the patience of a saint. Burning all those little lines and triangles into the ground had to have taken forever. I didn’t recognize the other language that made up more than half of the writing, but I was sure Bob would know what it was.</p><p>“Any idea what it does?” Murphy asked. “Is it real?” Real magic, she meant.</p><p>“Not sure,” I said.  The circle didn’t look like anything I’d learned about or used before, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t real. Plenty of self-taught wizards made up stuff that worked perfectly well but was unrecognizable to those of us who had gone through formal apprenticeships. Witches also had a habit of modifying spells and creating new ones from basic parts like circles and pentacles. It was going to take research to figure out what this one was meant for.</p><p>Given the dead body, I was sure it wasn’t meant for anything good.</p>
<hr/><p>Lauren was awake when I got home. She was sitting at the kitchen table glaring at a can of Coke like it had done her a personal injustice.</p><p>“Morning,” I said. “How are you feeling?”</p><p>“I feel like...” Lauren frowned and looked at Spike, who was browsing my bookshelves. “Remember that time we drank Kalaxin rum? Like that, except I’m not blue.”</p><p>“So like you drank two bottles of vodka and then went five rounds with Faith,” Spike said. I assumed the Faith he was talking about was the so-called Dark Slayer who was in charge of SGWC operations in Cleveland alongside Lauren and a guy called Robin. </p><p>Lauren put her head down on the table. “Uh huh. Never magicking a volcano again.”</p><p>I took my drawing out of my pocket and hung up my coat. “Did Thomas take Mouse for a walk?”</p><p>“Yes, he did,” Spike said. “What’s the story on your corpse?”</p><p>I showed him my incomplete diagram. Murphy had promised to get me photos of the whole circle once they moved the body, but I had enough to start researching. Spike raised an eyebrow as he studied my sketch.</p><p>“Do you recognize it?” I asked. The SGWC dealt with magic users fairly often. I wouldn’t have been surprised if Spike had seen a similar circle before.</p><p>“Not a bit,” Spike said. “Elphaba, you up for a puzzle?”</p><p>“What’s it?” Lauren asked.</p><p>“Magic circle. Have a look.” Spike handed her the drawing.</p><p>Lauren looked at the paper and immediately went very pale. She squeezed her eyes shut and looked again.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” I asked.</p><p>“It’s one of mine.” Lauren dropped the paper on the table and reached for her can of Coke. “I used it in L.A. just after Sunnydale sank, before the Jasmine Cult riots.”</p><p>An image of the skinned corpse flashed across my mind. I went to the ice box to get my own can of Coke and took a long drink.</p><p>Spike looked grim. “That’d explain why I don’t know it then.”</p><p>“Can you tell me what it does?” I asked. Knowing the magic that came out of Sunnydale, I could only hope that we weren’t dealing with what the SGWC calls an apocalypse.</p><p>Lauren put her soda can back on the table with exaggerated care. “It raises the dead.”</p><p>And it had been in a graveyard.</p><p>Hell's bells.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Seeley Booth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The head of Chicago PD’s Special Investigations Unit worked out of a small, temporary-looking office with a piece of paper with her name on it tapped onto the door. Seeley Booth had seen run-down police departments, but Special Investigations seemed more like an afterthought than anything else.</p><p>Booth knocked on the half-open door. The tiny blonde woman behind the desk looked up. She looked ready to jump into action at any moment. Likely action that would leave people who weren’t her with multiple broken bones.</p><p>“Lieutenant Murphy?” Booth asked.</p><p>The woman frowned. Her eyes lingered on his tie for a moment before darting over his shoulder to where Bones and Sweets were standing behind him. “Yes. Who’s asking?”</p><p>Booth took out his badge and showed it to her. “FBI Special Agent Seeley Booth. These are my colleagues Doctor Temperance Brennan, forensic anthropologist, and Doctor Lance Sweets, FBI psychologist. We’re here about the skinned man.”</p><p>“Of course you are,” Lieutenant Murphy said. “Well, don’t lurk in the doorway. What does the FBI want this time?”</p><p>Booth, Bones and Sweets stepped into Lieutenant Murphy’s office. It had a basic set-up, desk, computer, telephone. The only chair in the room was Lieutenant Murphy’s, so the three of them had to stand across from her.</p><p>“Your case is similar to one we worked on about four years ago,” Booth said. “Do you remember the Hellfire Murders?”</p><p>Lieutenant Murphy’s frown deepened. “Started in L.A., ended in Cleveland without anyone getting caught. You think it’s the same guy?”</p><p>The crime scene in Graceland matched the first of the Hellfire Murders, down to the body being left next to a stone carved with the name Vivian Kathrine Lake. In the case of L.A. the body had been in a family mausoleum and not out in the open, but other than that the crime scenes were almost exactly the same. Booth and Bones had gotten involved because later victims had been burnt beyond the expertise of most medical examiners.  </p><p>“Booth thinks it’s the same person. I think it’s a copycat,” Bones said.</p><p>Booth was hoping that that there wasn’t more than one human being who was that messed up.</p><p>“It would have been nice if someone told me you were coming,” Lieutenant Murphy said. The phone on her desk rang and she answered it after a quick apology. “Yes?...No, that’s fine. Thank you.” She hung up and turned back to Booth, Bones and Sweets. “I guess you’ll want to see the body. Let me check if Butters is free.”</p><p>Sweets gave a cough that was definitely his attempt to muffle laughter. “Who?”</p><p>“Doctor Waldo Butters, our ME,” Lieutenant Murphy said. She finished dialing a number and held the handset of her phone up to her ear.</p><p>“That’d be great,” Booth said.</p><p>Lieutenant Murphy spoke after a moment of waiting. “Hi, Butters, it’s Murphy. Are you busy?...The FBI sent some people to work on the Graceland case....Not Rich. Agent Booth, Doctor Brennan and Doctor Sweets....Yes, Doctor Temperance Brennan.”</p><p>Lieutenant Murphy took the phone away from her ear as Butters (presumably) shrieked loud enough for Booth to hear.</p><p>“Sound like you’ve got a fan, Bones,” Booth said. Bones narrowed her eyes at him and then shrugged.</p><p>Once the shrieking had stopped, Lieutenant Murphy arranged to meet with Butters at the morgue. When she put down the phone she eyed Booth with something that definitely looked like suspicion.       </p><p>“I’ll drive you to the morgue, if you want,” Lieutenant Murphy said. “Traffic can get pretty tricky around there.”</p><p>“We’ll follow you,” Booth said. Bones had some tools in the rental car that she’d probably want and it wouldn’t be worth the trouble to transfer them to Lieutenant Murphy’s vehicle and back.</p><p>Lieutenant Murphy fixed Booth with a look that he could not read. Then she nodded and led them out of the building.</p><hr/><p>Behind the door in the morgue that Lieutenant Murphy stopped at, someone was playing polka music. Lieutenant Murphy knocked loudly. The music abruptly stopped.</p><p>A man shorter than Booth with rectangular glasses and black hair that was nearly standing on end opened the door. He looked at them with wide eyes and squeaked once before clearing his throat. “Morning, Murphy. I’ve got our John Doe ready for you.”</p><p>“Great,” Lieutenant Murphy said. She introduced them to Dr. Butters, who squeaked again before letting them in.</p><p>Bones headed straight for the body lying on the table in the middle of the room. Booth and Sweets, on the other hand, were immediately distracted by the pile of instruments in one corner.</p><p>“What is that?” Sweets asked.</p><p>Dr. Butters broke off what he was saying to Bones and turned to where Sweets was pointing. “That is a polka suit.”</p><p>Booth squinted at the pile of instruments. There were buckles and straps attached to most of them. He could kind of see how it went together as a suit. Kind of.</p><p>Sweets blinked, confusion written on his face. “Why?”</p><p>Butters fixed a steely stare on Sweets and Booth and firmly said, “Because polka will never die.”</p><p>“Okay,” Booth said. “Can we get back to the dead guy?”</p><p>Bones had donned gloves and was examining the body, murmuring to herself occasionally. Booth stepped closer so he could hear what she was saying.</p><p>“There aren’t any kerf marks,” Bones said as she studied the areas of bare bone on the head with a magnifying lens. “How was the skin and subcutaneous fat removed without leaving kerf marks?”</p><p>If Booth was remembering correctly, that was a question they'd had last time too.</p><p>“There are at least three overlapping stab wounds on his back,” Dr. Butters said. “They severed his spine, pierced his heart and one hit his left lung. It looks like it was the same knife for all of them.”</p><p>Bones raised an eyebrow at Booth. “The original Hellfire Murders all showed evidence of a single stab wound.”</p><p>“It could be escalation,” Booth pointed out. More knife wounds didn’t mean that it was a copycat.</p><p>“The increased violence of the attack could indicate that the perpetrator is feeling more anger,” Sweets said. “Perhaps because they’ve had to stop killing for the past three years. Alternatively, this could be a different killer.”</p><p>Dr. Butters looked back and forth between them with wide eyes. “Hellfire Murders? No one said anything about hellfire.”</p><p>“Yeah, it’s looking like Harry will be earning his paycheck on this one,” Lieutenant Murphy said grimly.</p><p>Dr. Butters sighed. “Wonderful.”</p><p>Booth tried to exchange a look with Bones and failed. Bones was focused on the corpse’s right elbow.</p><p>“Harry?” Sweets asked. “Is that your partner?”</p><p>Lieutenant Murphy scoffed. A smile that was part amused, part exasperated crossed her face. “He’s a private investigator we called in to consult. Occult cases are his specialty.”</p><p>Booth managed to stop himself from groaning. Working with private investigators was not his favourite thing in the world, but judging by the challenging look Lieutenant Murphy was giving him he was going to have to work with this Harry guy if he wanted Lieutenant Murphy and SI to keep giving him the time of day. Was the whole police department like this or just Special Investigations? Other officers in the SI bullpen had been giving Booth, Bones and Sweets side-eye too. They were in Chicago, not some small town in the Appalachians where everyone was in everyone else’s business.</p><p>“Do you know anything about his identity?” Booth gestured at the body on the table.</p><p>Lieutenant Murphy shook her head, exchanging threat for thoughtfulness. “Nothing yet. We’re combing through missing persons, but there’s no guarantee he was even reported missing. Twenty- to thirty-year-old male, right Butters?”</p><p>“Who’s had his appendix and wisdom teeth removed, yes,” Dr. Butters said. “Dr. Brennan, you work with an artist who does facial reconstruction, don’t you? Could they give Murphy more to work with?”</p><p>“Of course,” Bones said at once. “But don’t you have your own artists?”</p><p>Lieutenant Murphy and Dr. Butters looked at each other.</p><p>“It isn’t easy for SI to access those resources,” Lieutenant Murphy said eventually. “It would take too long.”</p><p>Okay, that was messed up.</p><p>“I’ll send photos to Angela,” Bones said.</p><p>“What is wrong with your department?” Booth asked. He didn’t get an answer.</p><hr/><p>“Lieutenant Murphy was very defensive,” Sweets said. “That could imply a lack of confidence in herself or her subordinates.”</p><p>Booth looked over his shoulder and changed lanes. “Or she was worried about me taking her case away from her. She’s a cop. Cops get territorial. It’s like when we try to work with NCIS.”</p><p>Sweets grimaced. “I’ve heard Agent Gibbs is, uh...”</p><p>“The words you’re looking for are ‘a piece of work’,” Booth said. “Trust me, all the rumours are true.”</p><p>All the rumours and then some. Booth knew agents who’d had to work with Gibbs’s team and come back asking for a transfer or early retirement.</p><p>Sweets flinched and muttered something about vacation days.</p><p>“Angela says she’ll have the reconstructions for us by the time we’re back at the office.” Bones pocketed her cell phone and looked at Booth from the passenger seat. “Are you going to take this case away from Lieutenant Murphy?”</p><p>Booth shook his head. They’d gotten this case because they’d missed catching the Hellfire Murderer the first time. The new perspective of Lieutenant Murphy and her team could be just what they needed to solve this one. So, no, he wasn’t going to make her hand over total control and then freeze her out. If they solved it maybe it could help SI get more recognition too. That could only be good for SI.</p><p>“The Harry guy she was talking about could be helpful,” Sweets said. “It sounds like he may have insight into the killer’s thought process.”</p><p>Bones muttered something that Booth was sure was some version of “I hate psychology.” Booth hid a smile by turning to check his blind spot.</p><p>The car’s GPS announced that their destination was on the right. Booth turned right and then right again to claim an empty space in Graceland Cemetery’s parking lot. The three of them got out of the car and walked towards the place where yellow police tape could be seen between the trees.</p><p>The mausoleum that the first of the Hellfire Murderer’s victims had been killed in was dark. It had been so dark that with the body hidden in Vivian Kathrine Lake’s sarcophagus no one had even known it was a crime scene until months later when some kids broke in with flashlights looking for a place to smoke and saw the blood on the floor. By that time the killer had already left behind three more victims. The crime scene in Graceland was out in the open. That body had been found by an early morning dog walker not even twelve hours before. Booth was hopeful that examining the nearly undisturbed site would give them something new to work with. That hope crashed and burned the second the grave the body had been dumped on came into view.</p><p>Booth stopped dead and stared at the very obviously disturbed grave site. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”</p><p>The freshly-turned earth of the old grave cut a swath through the pattern of burns on the ground. Someone had dug it up at least partway and filled it back in again. Anything that Booth or Bones might have found, anything that SI had missed, had almost certainly been destroyed.</p><p>There was also the grave desecration, but with a murderer on the loose Booth’s anger about that took a back seat.</p><p>“Who would do this?” Bones said.</p><p>“Why would they do this?” Sweets said.</p><p>“I don’t know.” Booth turned and stalked back towards the car. “But I’m going to find out.”      </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I would like to note that to my knowledge there is no one named Vivian Kathrine Lake buried at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Harry Dresden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>One thing I’ve learned from spending time with the SGWC is that everyone who works for them is highly skilled at lying. If I hadn’t known any better, I would have believed the story Spike and Lauren spun for Murphy while we were waiting for Mac to finish making our food. It made perfect sense that they’d only come to Chicago to investigate the murder. Murphy needed more convincing that the SGWC was legally allowed to be involved.</p><p>“We have all our papers and people in order,” Lauren said. “Actually, one of our agents was going to read you in next week but then, well, this.”</p><p>Murphy raised an eyebrow. “You’ve got an agent where? In SI?”</p><p>Spike chuckled. “Can’t give away all our secrets, sheriff.”</p><p>Murphy took a sip of her beer and leveled a stare at Spike and Lauren. I tried to picture what she was seeing. A twenty-something man with bleach blond hair and a leather duster out of the seventies (my duster is cowboy chic, thankyouverymuch), and a woman barely out of her teens wearing a Team Jacob T-shirt and jittering from too much caffeine. Not exactly what someone would expect a crack supernatural investigation team to look like. I’d been assured that the T-shirt was a joke and then needed to have it explained why it was so important that it was a joke. Hey, I’d been a little too busy tangling with real vampires to pay attention to fictional sparkling ones.</p><p>Across the room, Mac caught my attention and pointed to four plates he’d placed on the bar. Our dinner was up.</p><p>Spike and I went to pick up our plates, dodging chairs and bodies around the other twelve tables on the way to the bar and back. McAnally’s Pub is the gathering place of choice for the non-demonic part of Chicago’s magical community. That night it was crowded. Word about the body in Graceland had spread in the way news does among the supernatural crowd and people were spooked. From the whispers I overheard, it sounded like no one actually knew what was going on, only that a person had been found who looked like they’d been murdered as part of a spell. Whether the killer was human or something other, McAnally’s was a safe place for minor practitioners to lay low and wait for the whole thing to blow over. The pub is neutral ground under the Unseelie Accords. If anyone tried to attack there, or if the police showed up to try to drag someone out, they’d make a lot of powerful beings very annoyed. The kind of annoyed that leads to retaliatory murder.</p><p>When Spike and I returned to our table at the back of the pub, Murphy and Lauren were talking about the magic that could be involved in the case. I put Murphy’s plate down in front of her and slid into my seat. The steaks Mac had cooked smelled amazing. I didn’t get to eat his food often enough.</p><p>“...probably a witch,” Lauren was saying. “Wizards have more power on average but witches can do more with what we’ve got. A straight up trade resurrection isn’t that hard, especially since they left her buried.”</p><p>“You’re overestimating the average witch,” Spike said. “You grew up on a Hellmouth, don’t forget.”</p><p>Lauren shrugged and picked up her fork. “There’s some oogy ley line stuff going on in Chicago. It’s not as much of a boost, but any witch can get power from ley lines.”</p><p>That was a worrying statement. Witches weren’t under the authority of the White Council, which was basically the wizard government that enforced the Laws of Magic. There wouldn’t be any other Wardens backing us up if a witch decided to recreate <em>Night of the Living Dead </em>in my city, not with the war with the Red Court spreading us thin and the SGWC already on site. I’d already had to avert a zombie apocalypse back in October. I wasn’t keen to deal with more necromancy.</p><p>“That doesn’t help narrow down our suspects, does it?” Murphy asked.</p><p>Lauren and Spike looked at each other.</p><p>“The circle,” Lauren said. “You mentioned the Hellfire Murders. It isn’t the same person, but they’d have to have access to whatever files the feds have got or they took their own pictures. That’s not a circle someone could create on their own. I mean, a bit of it’s the <em>Necronomicon </em>but the rest...isn’t.”</p><p>The rest of the circle, the parts that I hadn’t recognized and that my spirit of intellect in a skull Bob had needed a bit more time than usual to figure out, were from Lauren’s family grimoire. The grimoire was locked up in a SGWC library and could only be read with permission from its owner, Lauren. It should have been impossible for anyone to get a hold of it and use it to recreate her resurrection circle. That hadn’t stopped Lauren from calling someone named Kit to check on the book. It hadn’t made me feel any better that it was where it should be.</p><p>“How do you know it isn’t the same person?” Murphy asked.</p><p>Lauren’s cheeks turned pink. “That’s a conversation to have in private.”</p><p>The rest of the meal was spent bringing Murphy up to date with Chicago’s demon community. There had been more Blood Clan vampires moving in since I’d burnt down the Velvet Room, a Red Court stronghold formerly owned by my deceased enemy Bianca St. Claire. The Blood Clans and the Red Court both fed on human blood and there was less competition without the Velvet Room around. I hadn’t noticed an uptake, but apparently that was because I’m me.</p><p>“Wait,” I said. “Are you saying that dark magic users have moved out of Chicago because they’re <em>scared </em>of me?”</p><p>“And dark magic dealers, and some of the smarter evil demons,” Lauren said. “They’re terrified. You have a reputation for raining down destruction on the bad guys.”   </p><p>“I do not.” I looked at Murphy, who was failing to hide a smirk. “I don’t.”</p><p>“There’s a reason the Slayer likes you,” Spike said. “They know your name in demon bars.”</p><p>I grumbled wordlessly and went back to eating my steak.</p>
<hr/><p>Lauren and Spike had checked into a hotel a few blocks from Mac’s the night after we’d dug up Mrs. Lake’s grave. Murphy and I met them there after dinner. When Spike let us into their room, the protective spells Lauren had put up passed over me, leaving a fizzing warning behind. Nothing with bad intentions would be getting through those. All of the lights in the room were turned off. Instead, there was magic causing the ceiling to glow brightly enough that it almost seemed like it was midday instead of three hours past sunset.</p><p>“So, what do you know about this case?” Murphy asked.</p><p>Lauren gestured towards the two armchairs under a lamp by the window. “You should probably sit down.” She was sitting cross-legged on the bed nearest to the window, spinning a packet of gum between her fingers. “And let us get through the whole story before you decide to do anything.”</p><p>Murphy and I sat down. Lauren repeated what she’d told me and Thomas while we were saving Mrs. Lake from suffocating in her coffin. She’d created the spell to resurrect a friend who’d died in Sunnydale and had a body to bury. Then she got into more detail that was new to me.</p><p>“After the riots—did you hear about the riots in L.A.?” Lauren asked. “Sunnydale falling into a sinkhole might have been bigger news.”</p><p>Murphy nodded. “I heard about the riots. There was talk about calling in officers from other cities. I think every police department in the country was notified.”</p><p>“Really? Weird. Anyway, after that I kept working on a spell to bring back Sunnydale. I’ll admit that it wasn’t my best idea, but it means that I know that the spell in Graceland wasn’t the Hellfire Murderer’s because I didn’t kill that guy.” Lauren popped a piece of gum into her mouth.   </p><p>Murphy was able to speak before I was. Hey, you find out your daughter was a serial killer and see how well you take it.</p><p>“You killed seven people to resurrect a town?” Murphy asked. I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t seem angry or shocked or disgusted. Resigned, maybe. That was probably my fault. Murphy’s met a lot of...interesting people since she started hiring me to work with SI. I don’t think there’s much that can faze her anymore.</p><p>“Nine people. And that was the plan,” Lauren said. “Lots of people worth resurrecting. I mean, Sunnydale was the murder capital of America. Not to be confused with Greendale, the cannibalism capital of America.”</p><p>Now Murphy looked shocked. “<em>Cannibalism</em> capital?”</p><p>Lauren shrugged. “Church of Darkness. Don’t ask. You don’t want to know.”</p><p>I made a mental note to ask Bob about Greendale.</p><p>“Church of Darkness?” Murphy muttered. She shook her head. “So if it wasn’t <em>you</em>, do you have any names to put on our suspect list?”</p><p>Lauren chewed her gum in silence for a few seconds. “Our usual troublemakers are more get-change-from-leaves-charmed-to-look-like-cash than murder-and-resurrection. We checked out Mrs. Lake’s family today and none of them use magic, and if it was them they probably wouldn’t have left her buried. I’d say anyone who worked on the original case is a good place to start, especially if they can read Akkadian.”</p><p>Spike cleared his throat. “And your sister.”</p><p>Lauren’s hands shook violently and the pack of gum went flying across the room. Spike caught it.</p><p>“And my sister,” Lauren said. “Because Amy can read our family grimoire. Are we sure there aren’t any dark magic dealers in town?”</p><p>“Absolutely certain,” Spike said. “And if you go looking for one, I’ll knock you out and chain you up in the bathtub, got it?”</p><p>Lauren nodded. “Thanks for that. But skip the bathtub. We’re in a hotel, the bathtub is gross.”</p><p>Okay, there was a lot to unpack there. I tried really hard not to think about half of it because that was my daughter. As for the other half, calling them dealers implied that their magic had a probably addictive drug-like quality not unlike the earth magic the SGWC had used to save the world. Lauren was getting shakes that I’d thought were from caffeine, which is also a drug even though most humans don’t treat it like one.</p><p>“How bad is the withdrawal?” I asked.</p><p>Lauren bared her teeth. “I’m holding it off with caffeine and nicotine. When I don’t have to anymore, it’s going to be hell. You’d think my body would know the difference between dark magic and earth magic, but no.” She gave Murphy a closed-lip smile. “Sunnydale fucked me up. I promise it won’t affect my ability to do my job.”</p><p>“I’m holding you to that,” Murphy said after a moment.</p><p>We spent the next hour putting together what we knew. The murder had likely happened between midnight and one, the prototypical witching hour. Skinning the victim wasn’t required for the spell. The Hellfire Murders victims had only been skinned to get rid of DNA evidence. (Lauren didn’t go into detail, which I was grateful for.) The FBI agent and his team who were supposedly working with Murphy (I’ve had <em>experiences </em>with the FBI, I don’t trust their honesty) had been the original investigators of the Hellfire Murders.</p><p>“Do you want to work with the feds?” Lauren asked. “Because we can get rid of them if you want. Xander does that a lot. He’s got the ‘this is no longer your jurisdiction’ face down in five languages.”</p><p>I chuckled at the image. The Xander Harris I’d met had more in common with an excited puppy than a federal agent. I guess that was appropriate considering that his jurisdiction was more international than federal.</p><p>Murphy frowned contemplatively. “Tempting, but considering that they are suspects it would be better to keep them around. I hope they aren’t hiding hexenwolf belts.”</p><p>With our luck...Yeah, that was probably something to be concerned about.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Seeley Booth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was disturbing how much a burnt body smelled like barbeque. Booth tried to distract himself from that by comparing the scene in front of him to the second Hellfire Murder. Whole human body burnt to a crisp? Check. Circle of occult symbols? Check. Located inside a funeral parlor? Not even close.</p>
<p>The side street that the body was lying on was in a quiet suburban neighbourhood with large houses that screamed wealth, or at least very well off. The circle surrounding the body looked like it was drawn in black paint, like the original had been. It was on the sidewalk under a tree and between streetlamps. Booth thought that was probably why no one had noticed it until four in the morning, despite Dr. Butters estimating time of death as around eleven the night before, not accounting for the fire. The woman who’d found it was crying and clinging to Sweets while he awkwardly tried to get information out of her. Booth didn’t envy him.</p>
<p>The sound of a car pulling up behind him made Booth glace over his shoulder. When he saw the car he did a double take. The car was a VW Bug that looked like it had been through hell and needed to be fixed with parts from half a dozen other Bugs. One door was red, the other white. The roof seemed to be one yellow piece that had a duct tape patch above the driver’s side. The headlights were both encased in green. The hood was painted with nothing but grey primer. The man who unfolded himself from the driver’s seat was nearly as strange as his car. He was at least ten inches taller than Booth, was wearing a leather duster despite the summer heat and had a glove on his left hand but not his right.</p>
<p>“About time, Harry,” Lieutenant Murphy muttered as the man walked towards them.</p>
<p>“Wait, that’s Dresden?” Booth asked. He’d pictured someone more...professional. Khakis and a collared shirt, not jeans, a ‘Han Solo Shot First’ T-shirt and messy brown hair that was falling into his eyes.</p>
<p>“What’ve we got, Murphy?” Dresden asked. He looked at Booth for a second before turning his attention to the body behind them. “Yikes.”</p>
<p>“Exactly,” Lieutenant Murphy said.</p>
<p>The young brunette woman standing behind Dresden, who Booth hadn’t noticed before thanks to Dresden’s everything, stepped forwards and very obviously looked around Lieutenant Murphy at the body.</p>
<p>“I’m sorry, who are you?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>“Call me Madison,” the woman said. “I’m a representative of the SGWC.”</p>
<p>“Never heard of it,” Booth said.</p>
<p>A thin smile crossed Madison’s face. “That’s not surprising. We have niche expertise.”</p>
<p>Dresden chuckled. “That’s one way to put it.”</p>
<p>It was abundantly clear that “niche expertise” was in no way a full explanation of what the SGWC did.   </p>
<p>Madison was studying the body again. “Any chance we can get closer, sheriff?”</p>
<p>“Don’t call me that,” Lieutenant Murphy said. But her eyes showed that she was hiding a smile as she led Dresden and Madison past the police tape. She must have worked with Madison before too, if she liked her enough to allow a nickname.</p>
<p>Booth hurried after them and fell into step beside Lieutenant Murphy. The smell of the body wasn’t any less disturbing up close. Why would it be?</p>
<p>“Huh,” Madison said. “This was a controlled burn.”</p>
<p>“What do you mean?” Lieutenant Murphy asked.</p>
<p>“Look at the scorch marks,” Madison said.</p>
<p>Booth was the first to realize what she was talking about. “They’re close to the body.”</p>
<p>“And nowhere else.” Madison looked over at Dresden. “Not exactly flamethrower-y.”</p>
<p>The thought of a murderer walking around with a flamethrower was not a pleasant one. Booth hid a flinch and doubled his focus on the body. The charred pavement around it was evidence that the body had been burnt on site, which made Booth even less optimistic about the observational skills of the people who lived on this street. Missing someone carrying a body in the dark was one thing. Missing the equivalent of a bonfire was another.</p>
<p>The fire hadn’t destroyed all of the guy’s clothing. There were blue patches on his arms and torso that looked like melted plastic, likely the remains of his shirt. His boots were almost fully intact. Booth wondered what the odds were that he had his wallet on him and it wasn’t completely toast. Some salvageable ID would be great. Angela hadn’t gotten any hits on her reconstruction of the first victim’s face yet.</p>
<p>“I see some cameras,” Lieutenant Murphy said. “Hopefully they’ve actually been recording.”</p>
<p>They ended up being pretty lucky. Almost all of the security cameras in the area were active. Of course, that meant that there was a lot of footage to go through and Booth was pretty sure that the analysts at the Chicago office already hated him after the Graceland footage gave them a whole lot of nothing. Even Angela hadn’t been able to get anything out of the corrupted video that happened to appear during the time when the grave was dug up.</p>
<p>Okay, so it wasn’t totally nothing. It did mean that whoever dug up the grave had the tech to temporarily screw up cameras, but there were way too many ways for someone to get hold of something like that. It didn't narrow anything down.</p>
<p>Angela’s reconstruction had finally produced a name for the first victim and the second victim had been carrying a driver’s licence that was salvageable. Booth was trying to find someone they could speak to about Colin Green and Owen Thurman when he got an email from one of the analysts. There was nothing in the message aside from a slightly grainy still from a security camera. Booth studied the faces of the man and the women in the picture for a few seconds before picking up the phone on his temporary desk.</p>
<p>“Agent Booth?” the woman who answered the phone asked.</p>
<p> “Yeah,” Booth said. “I got the photo you sent me. What happens in the rest of the video?”</p>
<p>“Come down two floors and see for yourself,” the woman said. Then she hung up.</p>
<p>Booth stared at the phone for a moment. Yeah, the analysts definitely hated him.</p>
<p>The video was damning. Owen Thurman walked past the camera to the spot where his body had been found hand-in-hand with Madison, talking and laughing. There was a glint of metal on Madison’s back between her skirt and her jacket. When she stretched Booth could clearly see the knife tucked into her waistband. Then she looked over her shoulder straight at the camera and grinned.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I know this chapter isn't very long, but ending it here fixes a lot of problems I was having with the next chapter. I'll try to get that one up to 3000 words to make up for this.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Seeley Booth</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was almost too easy to find Madison. Lauren Madison had checked into a Chicago hotel on May 31<sup>st</sup>, the day after Colin Green’s body had been recovered. Booth got the address and room number from Lieutenant Murphy by asking for a way to contact the “SGWC representative”, as apparently Madison hadn’t left a phone number. If he hadn’t seen her on video with Owen Thurman carrying the knife that had likely killed him, the lack of phone number would have made Booth only slightly suspicious. As it was, he looked up Lauren Madison and the SGWC while he was calling ahead to check if she was currently at the hotel. The only thing his quick search found was a character named Amy Madison in an online video game where SGWC stood for Slayers, Guardians and Watchers Council. Not helpful at all.</p>
<p>Lauren Madison was arrested without much incident. She swore once and then let Booth handcuff her. The aggressively blond British man in the hotel room with her looked like he was going to cause trouble but mostly backed off when Lauren told him to “call the lawyers”. He bared his teeth at Booth in a way that suggested that “the lawyers” were going to do their absolute best to tear their case to shreds.</p>
<p>Booth wished them luck. They had video evidence.</p>
<p>Booth, Bones, Sweets and Lieutenant Murphy watched Lauren from behind the one-way mirror that looked into the interrogation room. She appeared to be meditating.</p>
<p>“How the hell is she so calm?” Booth grumbled.</p>
<p>Sweets shrugged. “Psychopathy?”</p>
<p>“It’s not that.” Lieutenant Murphy had just gotten off a phone call with enough white noise to be heard from across the room that had left her scowling. Booth was pretty sure that was responsible for her harsh tone when she said, “She didn’t kill them.”</p>
<p>“I find that unlikely,” Bones said. “She’s the right height to have caused the stab wounds in both our victims.”</p>
<p>“And we caught her on camera with Owen Thurman minutes before he died,” Booth said.</p>
<p>Lieutenant Murphy crossed her arms, clenched her jaw and didn’t say anything else. Booth refrained from arguing with her more. Despite her views, they were on the same side.</p>
<p>When Booth got the call that Lauren’s lawyer had arrived he headed into the interrogation room, holding the door open for Bones while reminding himself that he shouldn’t hope for the lawyer to get there in time for him to close the door in their face. He was a professional.</p>
<p>Lauren didn’t even open her eyes when they sat down across from her. “I don’t have to tell you anything without my lawyer,” she said. She shifted her hands slightly and rattled the chains attaching her handcuffs to the table.</p>
<p>“Your lawyer’s in the building,” Booth said.</p>
<p>Lauren looked like she was going to say something but pursed her lips and remained silent.</p>
<p>After a few minutes the door opened and a dark-haired man in a grey suit with his shirt buttoned nearly up to his chin walked in. He was carrying a slim briefcase that he placed on the floor next to the table. Definitely a lawyer.</p>
<p>“Wesley Pryce, of Charles and Pryce,” the lawyer introduced himself.</p>
<p>“Hey, Wes,” Lauren said, finally opening her eyes. “Not going to lie, I was kind of expecting Charlie.”</p>
<p>“He’s in Maine,” Wesley said.</p>
<p>The lawyer had a prim British accent that was tempered by some Californian vowels. He’d clearly spent a lot of time on the west coast. Lauren’s accent also placed her in California for a significant amount of time.</p>
<p>The Hellfire Murders had started in California.  </p>
<p> “Ah.” Lauren tilted her head. “Does Cordy still hate me?”</p>
<p>Wesley narrowed his eyes at her. “Cordy will always hate you.”</p>
<p>Lauren shrugged. “I can hope.”</p>
<p>Neither of them even looked at Booth or Bones. Booth felt like they’d missed more than half of the conversation, plus context.</p>
<p>“False bravado?” Sweets said. Booth heard Lieutenant Murphy’s answering scoff through his earpiece.</p>
<p>“They’re trying to piss us off,” Lieutenant Murphy said.</p>
<p>They didn’t have to try. Booth was already pissed off.</p>
<p>Booth cleared his throat. “If we could get started.”</p>
<p>Wesley put on a pair of wire-rimmed glasses that seemingly appeared out of thin air. “You are accusing my client of two counts of murder that she could not possibly have committed and is in fact in Chicago to investigate.”</p>
<p>“By pretending to be part of an agency from a video game,” Booth said.</p>
<p>“A video game?” Sweets and Lieutenant Murphy asked.</p>
<p>Lauren raised her eyebrows. “You found that? I don’t know if Andy’ll be grumpy or thrilled.”</p>
<p>“Where were you the night of May twenty-ninth?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>“High as a fucking kite,” Lauren said. “Work accident.”</p>
<p>“Did cocaine explode on you too?” Bones asked.</p>
<p>“Uh, something like that.” For the first time since she’d been arrested Lauren looked worried. “Are you okay? Does that happen a lot?”</p>
<p>Bizarre situations like that did happen to them a lot, but that was a problem for another time.</p>
<p>“Where were you?” Booth repeated.</p>
<p>“Being babysat at a colleague’s place,” Lauren said. “Ask my partner. He was the babysitter.”</p>
<p>Booth raised his eyebrows. “Your partner?”</p>
<p>“Spike. You met him at the hotel.” A smirk flashed across Lauren’s face when Booth failed to hide a winch. “I don’t even know who the guy who died is. How could I have killed him?”</p>
<p>“By stabbing him in the back three times,” Bones said.</p>
<p>Booth took two pictures out of the folder on the table in front of him. He put the first one down facing Lauren. “Colin Green.”</p>
<p>Lauren’s eyes flickered over the picture of the smiling man. She showed no visible reaction.</p>
<p>The second picture went down next to the first. “Owen Thurman,” Booth said.</p>
<p>This time Lauren did react. She stared at Owen Thurman’s driver’s licence photo, squeezed her eyes shut and then stared again. A low keening sound tore out of her throat.</p>
<p>“Seems like you know him,” Booth said.</p>
<p>The keening grew louder. Lauren covered her face with both hands.</p>
<p>Wesley glared at Booth. “If you could refrain from causing my client further distress.”</p>
<p>Lauren ducked her head and murmured something Booth didn’t quite catch. Then she looked at Booth with pain in her eyes. “Owen and I dated. I was hoping you didn’t mean him when you arrested me.”</p>
<p>“Bad break-up?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>“I doubt she’d be this upset if it was,” Lieutenant Murphy said.</p>
<p>Lauren took a deep breath. “Owen and I dated in high school. We broke up my second year of college. We did stupid stuff together but we were growing out of it. Then my sister came back into my life and ‘stupid’ turned into ‘likely to get us killed’. Owen did the smart thing and got the hell out. I haven’t seen him for two years.”</p>
<p>Booth raised an eyebrow. “So you ran into an old ex and thought you’d get back at him for leaving you high and dry?”</p>
<p>“I haven’t seen him for two years,” Lauren repeated. “Last I heard he was in New York trying to get into publishing. I didn’t kill him.”</p>
<p>Booth debated if he should show their hand and bring up the video. It was solid evidence that Lauren had been with Owen before he was killed, carrying around a knife like some kind of accessory. He decided to hold off for a bit longer.</p>
<p>“So then where were you on Friday night?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>“Working on the investigation,” Lauren said. “Spike and I visited a few contacts. We got back to the hotel right before sunrise.”</p>
<p>It was impressive how she managed to lie so badly with such a straight face.</p>
<p>“Who are these contacts?” Bones asked.</p>
<p>Wesley looked at his client over his glasses. “I assume you paid Jonathan a visit.”</p>
<p>“We did,” Lauren said. She spoke to Booth. “Jonathan Levinson, owns and manages a club called the Bronze. He knew Owen. They were in the same graduating class. Big snake.”</p>
<p>Wesley sighed. Booth and Bones looked at Lauren incredulously.</p>
<p>“What?” Booth said.</p>
<p>Lauren chuckled weakly. “Sorry. Town in-joke. We didn’t get cable so we had to make our own fun.”</p>
<p>That seemed like a good point to take a break. Booth needed coffee, and maybe an aspirin for the headache he had forming.</p>
<p>As he and Bones were leaving the room, Booth heard Lauren mutter quietly but clearly.</p>
<p>“Fucking Sunnydale.”  </p>
<hr/>
<p>So, Jonathan Levinson confirmed that Lauren and Spike were at the Bronze until midnight, right through the time Owen would have been killed. They’d stayed at a corner table and talked to a lot of people who the FBI now had to find because this information contradicted the evidence they had. Booth and Bones thought Jonathan was lying to help his friend. Sweets and Lieutenant Murphy weren’t so sure.</p>
<p>Time to stall.</p>
<p>“Let’s talk about something else for a bit,” Booth said when he was back in the interrogation room. Lieutenant Murphy was joining him this time. Bones wanted to get back to examining the corpses.</p>
<p>“I assume it’s still related to this case, Agent Booth?” Wesley asked.</p>
<p>“The Hellfire Murders,” Booth said. “April 2003 to May 2004, L.A. to Cleveland.”</p>
<p>Lauren and Wesley looked at each other. Again, Booth felt like they’d missed half a conversation.</p>
<p>“Okay, I’ll bite,” Lauren said. “What are you asking?”</p>
<p>“You did a little disappearing act around that time,” Booth said. “What were you up to?”</p>
<p>“Trying not to die,” Lauren said. “I got caught in the Jasmine Cult riots. It was...unpleasant.”</p>
<p>Booth knew about the riots she was referring to. At the end of April 2003, L.A. had exploded into violence for no obvious reason. Dozens of people had died. He’d never heard them called the Jasmine Cult riots though.</p>
<p>“And what about after that?” Lieutenant Murphy asked.</p>
<p>Lauren shrugged. “Hell if I know.”</p>
<p>Booth’s headache was back. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked.</p>
<p>Lauren leaned across the table. “I had a drug problem. After the Jasmine Cult riots I was high for at least a year. I don’t know where I was, I don’t know who I was with and I don’t know what I did.” She sat back in her chair and met Booth’s eyes with a challenging gaze.</p>
<p>“The use of some drugs could lead to the kind of blackout she’s describing,” Sweets said. “See if you can get her to tell you what she was taking.”</p>
<p>Even though he really wanted to get Sweets his answer directly, Booth decided to go for a round-about questioning. For one, stalling. For another, multitasking. He could ask more questions that way.</p>
<p>“And that started in Sunnydale?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>There was a beat of silence and then Wesley went into full lawyer mode. Worse, he went into full <em>British </em>lawyer mode.</p>
<p>“I fail to see how that is relevant,” Wesley said with steel-cold politeness. “If you’ve begun grasping at straws, perhaps you should put your effort into catching someone else, like that diamond thief I heard about on my way here.”</p>
<p>Ouch.</p>
<p>“Wes,” Lauren said, “if the man wants to know about Sunnydale, let’s tell him about Sunnydale. It’ll be way cheaper than therapy.”</p>
<p>Wesley gave Lauren a look that was somewhere between amused and exasperated. “You have access to a therapist.”</p>
<p>Lauren smiled. “Too late, Wes, I’ve already learned to deal with traumatic experiences using jokes and repression.”</p>
<p>That one sentence explained a lot about Lauren Madison.</p>
<p>“Sunnydale?” Lieutenant Murphy prompted.</p>
<p>Lauren leaned towards them again. “Sunnydale, California. Sleepy little town with a teeny tiny gang problem that killed a lot of people. It’s at the bottom of a sinkhole now but there are probably some newspapers archived somewhere if you want to check out our obits.”</p>
<p>Did they have to worry about gangs that had escaped Sunnydale now? If Lauren was admitting to gang membership she had just made the case so much more complicated.</p>
<p>“You lived there?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>“Born and raised,” Lauren said. “Probably would have died there too except, you know, sinkhole. My graduating class was twenty people short and that was a low number.”</p>
<p>Booth grimaced. Twenty deaths in one class? “That sounds bad.”</p>
<p>Lauren shrugged. “It was Sunnydale. The good part of town wasn’t that far from the bad part of town. We didn’t have a lot of town.”</p>
<p>Wesley hid a smile behind his hand. Booth assumed he was reacting to another one of those Sunnydale in-jokes.</p>
<p>“Rack sold to kids who were already in over their heads,” Lauren said. “We were easier to get addicted that way. I was his favourite for a while.”  </p>
<p>“Nice guy,” Booth said.</p>
<p>“Could have been worse. He didn’t kill people on purpose much,” Lauren said.</p>
<p>That was a low bar there. Booth didn’t ask for clarification. Wesley would probably have been at his throat in a millisecond if he had.</p>
<p>“Anyway, he’s dead now,” Lauren said. “Probably. Does that answer your question?”</p>
<p>“No,” Sweets said. “It creates about a million more questions.”</p>
<p>Booth agreed with Sweets.</p>
<p>“Are you in a gang?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>“No,” Lauren said. No embellishment, almost no emotion. It was enough to give Booth whiplash.</p>
<p>“Have you ever joined a gang?” Booth asked.</p>
<p>A smile sliced across Lauren’s face. “If you joined a gang in Sunnydale, you never get out.”</p>
<p>That sounded like it was probably a no. Booth was putting it down as a no.</p>
<p>“Do you have any idea how long you were in L.A.?” Lieutenant Murphy asked.</p>
<p>“I...” Lauren rubbed her arms as if she were cold. “A few months, maybe? There’s a lot of blurry and that’s not good for tracking the passage of time. And I wasn’t in school—at least I don’t think I was in school—so that wouldn’t help me know either. Actually, there’s a lot I don’t remember about school. No wonder Snyder hated me. I mean, he hated everyone but—”</p>
<p>Wesley cleared his throat and Lauren stopped talking.</p>
<p>“What my client is saying is that she doesn’t know,” Wesley said.</p>
<p>Booth got that.</p>
<p>“She’s nervous,” Sweets said.</p>
<p>Booth got that too.</p>
<p>“Did you know that the amount of endorphins released when someone bites you and drinks your blood is similar to what’s released during sex?” Lauren said.</p>
<p>There was a long moment of silence.</p>
<p>“...She’s not wrong,” Sweets said.</p>
<p>Booth resisted the urge to put his head in his hands. “I didn’t need to know that. Why do you know that?” He wasn’t sure if he was speaking to Lauren or Sweets.</p>
<p>“My boss told me,” Lauren said. “We were working on a case that ended up involving a vampire brothel.”</p>
<p>Booth wasn’t even going to touch that. He had absolutely no desire to know more.</p>
<hr/>
<p>Their two sides ran circles around each other for another hour. Lauren stuck with her months’ long blackout story and between her and Wesley they got next to nothing useful out of the whole mess.</p>
<p>“Hey, Booth?” Sweets said when Booth was in the middle of trying to get more out of Lauren on the ex she’d mentioned and failing. “We’ve got confirmation that Lauren and Spike were at the Bronze while Owen was being murdered. Mr. Levinson sent over some security footage and Lauren doesn’t leave their table once. The analysts say it’s real.”</p>
<p>Booth turned and stared incredulously at the mirror Sweets was concealed behind. He could picture Sweets winching.</p>
<p>“Gotten some interesting news, have you?” Wesley asked.</p>
<p>Booth rounded on him and Lauren. “What did you do?”</p>
<p>“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re insinuating,” Wesley said.</p>
<p>Booth gritted his teeth. “Apparently Lauren’s alibi checks out even though that should be impossible.”</p>
<p>“Isn’t the point of an alibi that it checks out?” Lauren asked. “It would be pretty useless otherwise.”</p>
<p>“There’s video of you with Owen before he was killed,” Lieutenant Murphy said.</p>
<p>The expressions of shock on Lauren and Wesley’s faces were pure gold. Booth felt more than a little bit of vindictive glee.</p>
<p>“How...” Lauren stuttered. “I didn’t... I couldn’t have been... Right?”</p>
<p>“Lauren, when is the last time you saw your sister?” Wesley asked.</p>
<p>Booth bit back a groan. Right, there was a sister. Funny how she'd only come up once before now.</p>
<p>“When she left me alone in L.A.,” Lauren said. “You know that, Wes. You know that.”</p>
<p>The two of them went into silent communication mode for several long seconds.</p>
<p>“A twin sister?” Lieutenant Murphy asked.</p>
<p>Lauren shook her head. “Older.”</p>
<p>“We may be at an impasse,” Wesley said.</p>
<p>“Or they could let me go,” Lauren said. “Because, you know, I can’t be in two places at once.”</p>
<p>“Not a chance,” Booth said.</p>
<p>They ended up letting her go because it was impossible for her to have been in two places at once.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Harry Dresden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I see four options.” Lauren held up one hand and counted them off. “One, there’s someone or something going around wearing my face, like a glamour or a shapeshifter. Two, the video has been changed so it looks like I’m there. Three, it’s Amy in the video. Four, time travel.”</p>
<p>Lauren, Spike, Murphy, Thomas, Lauren’s lawyer/co-worker Wes and I were crowded into my apartment. The FBI had released Lauren three hours before on account of having more evidence of her not being a murder than the alternative. I didn’t know if the SGWC was responsible for that and I wasn’t asking.</p>
<p>“Does Amy really look enough like you to make that mistake?” Thomas asked.</p>
<p>Lauren nodded. “Also, again, glamours.”</p>
<p>“None of the footage was tampered with,” Murphy said. “Not that any of the FBI’s analysts can see.”</p>
<p>Spike scoffed. “Can they really see if they missed all the demons at the Bronze?”</p>
<p>Any obvious demons probably got written off as guys in masks. Humans are pretty good at explaining away magic like that. It’s a survival method. In our world, lots of things you don’t know can’t hurt you.</p>
<p>Of course, in a lot more cases things you don’t know absolutely can hurt you. I didn’t say it was a perfect survival method.</p>
<p>I turned to Lauren and Wes. “Could your magic change a video and go undetected?”</p>
<p>Wes frowned. “Well, yes, but the only people with such skills work for us or are counted among our allies.”</p>
<p>In other words, they were unlikely to frame Lauren for murder.</p>
<p>Then Lauren, Spike and Wes started throwing around people who would want to frame Lauren. It was a very long list.</p>
<p>“What about that bloke from that werewolf town?” Spike suggested.</p>
<p>Lauren shook her head. “Alan and I are cool now. Maybe that kid from Atlantis?”</p>
<p>“That was four thousand years ago. The kid’s long dead by now,” Spike said.</p>
<p>“Atlantis is real?” Murphy asked.</p>
<p>“Do I want to know why you were time traveling?” I asked. Then I shook my head. “Don’t answer that.” I needed plausible deniability for the White Council. They’d have a fit if they found out about anyone messing with time travel, witch or not.</p>
<p>Murphy sighed. “Okay, so there are a lot of people who would frame you, but which of them could? Whoever’s doing this knows your spells.”</p>
<p>Lauren rubbed her forehead. “Outside of the FBI...Wes is right. Amy is our top suspect.”</p>
<p>Wes turned to me. “Do you have the ingredients for a locator spell?”</p>
<p>I shrugged in answer. I had plenty of ingredients in my lab but there was no telling if they could be used for a witch’s spell. Wizards and witches have different ideas of what spell components are.</p>
<p>Wes raised an eyebrow at Bob’s skull when we went down into the subbasement where my lab was. Or maybe he was reacting to the worn bodice rippers and skin mags sharing shelf space with it. Either way, he didn’t comment on it.  </p>
<p>“What do you need?” I asked.</p>
<p>Wes rattled off a fairly short list of ingredients as he examined my other shelves. The most important thing he needed was a map of Chicago. I dug out the one that was rolled up behind my lead box of depleted uranium dust. I also had two of the three dried herbs Wes asked for. He said that was fine.</p>
<p>Back upstairs, Wes ground up the herbs and mixed them with a handful of table salt. “I need blood,” he said to Lauren.</p>
<p>Lauren cracked a smile. “Always with the blood.” She unsheathed the knife she kept strapped to her forearm and cut into the palm of her hand, letting it bleed directly into the bowl of salt. “Is that enough?”</p>
<p>Wes nodded. He picked up the bowl and poured the contents out onto the map that I’d spread on the table. With a few murmured words the mixture of salt, herbs and blood rose up in a sparking cloud and then condensed into four glowing red dots hovering over the map. Three of them marked the same building and the fourth was two streets over.</p>
<p>“Each mark is one of Lauren’s close blood relatives,” Wes said. “And Lauren herself, of course.”</p>
<p>Lauren pointed to the solitary light. “That’s Amy.”</p>
<p>Murphy frowned. “Are you sure?”</p>
<p>“Well, my mom’s been MIA since she tried to steal Amy’s body and got one of her own spells reflected back at her so...” Lauren shrugged.</p>
<p>Murphy looked back at the map. Her eyes narrowed. “Harry, why is the map saying that two of Lauren’s relatives are in this apartment with us?”</p>
<p>“Um,” I said. Eloquent, that’s me.</p>
<p>“Didn’t we talk about this?” Lauren asked. “I could have sworn we talked about this. I need coffee.”</p>
<p>Thomas eyed the giant Starbucks cup Lauren had been drinking from all afternoon. “You have coffee.”</p>
<p>“I need more coffee,” Lauren said. “And cigarettes. I’m out of nicotine gum.”</p>
<p>“You’re going to overdose,” Wes said.</p>
<p>Spike frowned. “Yeah, maybe don’t do that. Faith won’t be happy.”</p>
<p>Lauren flipped off both of her coworkers. I w-i-s-h I could get away with that. The White Council is full of assholes who could benefit from being flipped the bird every once and a while.</p>
<p>“Let’s go see what Amy is up to.” Lauren stood as she spoke. Wes and Spike followed her lead.</p>
<p>Murphy fixed me with a look of suspicion. “We’re talking later.”</p>
<p>I nodded. I’d kept secrets from Murphy before and it had never ended well. At least I was getting a bit more time to figure out how to tell her I’d known I’d had a daughter for years without her threatening bodily harm.</p>
<p>Then again, threats of bodily harm were more of a SGWC thing than a Murphy thing. I wasn’t sure if it was a bad thing or a good thing that my self-preservation seemed to see Murphy and Buffy Summers as equivalent. Murphy probably wouldn’t mind. Neither would Buffy. I decided it would be in my best interest to never let them meet.</p>
<p>We left Mouse and Mister to hold down the fort. The regularly Slayer-adjacent half of our group took point as we walked the short distance to Amy’s location. That didn’t stop me from noticing how pale Lauren was. Sparks popped from her fingers, easily visible in the darkness. Every street lamp we passed under flickered. I gripped my staff tightly. I had the feeling I was going to need it.</p>
<p>Apparently the Powers That Be that the SGWC folks were always talking about decided that we needed some dramatics, because the second we turned the last corner we were faced with a person who looked identical to Lauren holding a knife aloft, about to stab the man she had pinned to the ground.</p>
<p>Spike moved while the rest of us were still processing. He tackled Lauren’s doppelganger off of the man and then threw her in a direction that seemed random before she collided with what looked like thin air. An invisibility spell flickered out of existence.</p>
<p>“Hi, Amy,” Lauren said.</p>
<p>Amy and the doppelganger got to their feet, seemingly none the worse for being thrown into the concrete sidewalk. The young, dark-haired man who’d also been revealed took a futuristic looking gun off of his back.</p>
<p>“Sis, long time no see,” Amy said.</p>
<p>“So you sent the FBI after my head? You could have called,” Lauren said.  </p>
<p>Out of the corner of my eyes, I saw Wes help the would-be victim to his feet and gesture for him to run. Despite having been inches away from dying, the guy didn’t seem to be listening. He broke away from Wes and charged at Amy and the doppelganger. He didn’t make it two feet before the man with the gun fired at him and froze the leg bearing his weight to the ground. There was a loud, sickening crack as he came to a sudden stop. Murphy and I winced.</p>
<p>Spike bared his teeth. “Robot man. Thought Red killed you.”</p>
<p>“I got better,” ‘robot man’ said. He leveled his gun at Spike and fired a blast that the vampire dodged.</p>
<p>That sounded like more necromancy. Fantastic. Whichever gods, demons or Powers That Be that decided I didn’t have enough necromancy in my life needed to stop.</p>
<p>“You are not Amy or Warren,” the doppelganger said. She was mimicking Lauren’s voice too. “You are Lauren. You are Spike. You are unknown. You must die.”</p>
<p>“I hate to agree with the robot, but she’s right.” Amy didn’t look away from Lauren even as she spoke to the rest of us. “This is between me and my sister.”</p>
<p>The doppelganger was a robot.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’d believe that.</p>
<p>“Finally gotten over Willow?” Lauren asked.</p>
<p>Apparently that was a sore point. Amy barely paused to throw something shiny in our direction before lunging at Lauren with electricity crackling between her fingers.</p>
<p>I had a moment of panic when I saw that Amy had thrown a coin at us. By the time I realized that it wasn’t a Roman denarius the coin had sunken into the street and the asphalt was starting to bubble.</p>
<p>“Thomas,” Wes said sharply. He was defrosting the man whose broken leg was frozen to the ground with a handful of fire. “Get him to a hospital and then get back here, <em>quickly</em>.”</p>
<p>Thomas shook his head. “I’ll get someone to call an ambulance. They won’t remember me.”</p>
<p>“Go!” Wes transferred the man’s weight to Thomas and turned to the bubbling asphalt. “She’s summoned nightmares. Don’t let them touch you.”</p>
<p>“She summoned <em>what</em>?” Murphy demanded.</p>
<p>There wasn’t time for me or Wes to explain that Wes was talking about demons and not a murderous ghost. The first shadowy creature clawed its way out of Amy’s magical tar pit of nightmares. It looked like a cross between a Weeping Angel and a sarlacc at first, but as it charged towards us on all fours it morphed into different shapes. At least a dozen more nightmares followed it, forming chimeras of wolves, bears and big cats, crocodiles and sharks, victims of starvation—humanity’s primal fears. Each of them was darker than the surrounding night.</p>
<p>I swung my staff in an arc directed at the pack of nightmares. <em>“Forzare!”</em></p>
<p>Pure force tore through the nightmares at the head of the pack. Some of them burst into wisps of shadow but reformed as soon as the force passed.</p>
<p>“How do we fight them?” Murphy asked.</p>
<p>“Think happy thoughts and burn them alive,” Wes said. He threw a fireball that consumed one of the nightmares. The shrieking of the demon as it died wasn’t very helpful for the happy thoughts part.</p>
<p>Murphy didn’t have a flamethrower on hand, but her happy thoughts seemed to be doing a better job of keeping the nightmares back than the fire Wes and I were throwing around. Whenever we didn’t hit one head on it shook off the burns and kept coming at us. Murphy had a five foot radius around her that the nightmares wouldn’t touch. I was jealous of her after a few seconds of near misses. When the nightmares got too close I could feel them reaching into my mind and snapping psychic teeth at my fear. I didn’t what to know what happened when they touched someone.</p>
<p>Death, probably. It’s usually death with the demons the SGWC are used to fighting.</p>
<p>The demons weren’t the only problem we had to deal with. Spike was dodging freeze gun guy’s attacks and Lauren and Amy were yelling at each other while they threw spells, but the Lauren robot was free to do her best to kill us. The nightmares ignored her, probably because she didn’t have any human emotions, and she still had her knife. Wes ended up fighting her the most. He was trying to get through the pack of nightmares for some reason he wasn’t able to explain between fireballs and punches. I had to keep the nightmares off him when he was fighting the robot, which left me vulnerable to the demons when they split me and Murphy up. It was a very stressful experience. One out of ten, would not recommend.</p>
<p>Thomas had gotten back and was trying to help Spike fight freeze gun guy, who was probably called Warren but I don’t think any of us cared, by the time I realized that the robot <em>was a robot.</em> Robot meant modern electronics and modern electronics meant that I could destroy it with very little effort.</p>
<p>Look, I’d been a little busy fighting for my life, okay?</p>
<p><em>“Hexus!”</em> I called once I’d gotten the nightmares back far enough that I could breathe.</p>
<p>The robot froze in the middle of being disarmed by Wes. He continued the move and ended up knocking the robot to the ground. With the threat of getting stabbed taken care of, Wes was able to burn a path through the demons and pick up the coin in the pit spawning them with a handkerchief. The nightmares paused for three seconds exactly before they turned around and dove back into the bubbling asphalt. When the last of them disappeared the road went back to normal.</p>
<p>Wes put the coin in his pocket. “We sh—”   </p>
<p>A shriek of pain split the air. Amy had gotten a spell past Lauren’s guard. Whatever it was caused Lauren to scream and fall to the ground.</p>
<p>“Think you’re better than me now?” Amy demanded.</p>
<p>Lauren slowly looked up. The whites of her eyes had gone dark. Her hair whipped around in a windstorm that didn’t affect anyone else.</p>
<p>“Oh blast,” Wes said.</p>
<p>Lauren attacked.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Harry Dresden</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>So, I forgot how durable different types of vampires are while writing this chapter. Have fun with that.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If you’ve never been in the same city as two witches duking it out with dark magic you can count yourself lucky.</p>
<p>Lauren and Amy fought without any regard for their surroundings. Half of their deflected spells destroyed whatever they crashed into, usually chunks of the road or the walls of buildings that luckily were mostly businesses (and mostly dentists’ offices at that, there were ten on that street). The other half was things that would probably have killed the rest of us if we didn’t dodge them. I saw an acid green spell melt a tree in half and keep going through the building behind it. Something like that would not be healthy for a human or a vampire.</p>
<p>Spike threw Warren at Amy. She paid him barely any attention, swatting him away like a fly with force that made him crack the sidewalk when he hit it.</p>
<p>“Bloody shield,” Spike grumbled when Warren got back up. “Can’t you sort that out, wizard man?”</p>
<p>“Sort what out?” I asked. A chunk of the street rocketed at my head and I ducked and rolled out of the way. I like having me head in one piece, thanks.</p>
<p>“It’s an electric-powered force field,” Spike said.</p>
<p>That I could sort out, though I was questioning how Warren had managed to build a personal force field when as far as I knew they only existed in science fiction. It was probably a Sunnydale thing. I’d heard enough stories. Sunnydale did the impossible daily.</p>
<p>I could have tried to get closer to Warren to minimize the collateral damage, but with the magic I’d been throwing around most electronics in the area were probably half fried anyway. And I didn’t feel like taking the risk of having my skin flayed off by dark magic just to cross the street. Murphy would complain about me killing her cell phone but at least she’d be alive to complain.</p>
<p>I pointed my staff at Warren.<em>“Hexus!”</em></p>
<p>Warren let out a yell and ripped a sparking watch-like object off of his wrist. Spike bared his fangs in a sharp grin. In a second he’d crossed the street and broken Warren’s neck. The body hit the ground with a barely audible thud.</p>
<p>“You’re doing the paperwork for that,” Wes shouted.</p>
<p>“Better than Red finding out he’s alive,” Spike shouted back.</p>
<p>Amy seemed to notice that both her allies were dead (or whatever passed for dead for a robot). She grimaced briefly and then moved both of her hands in front of her chest. “Goddess Hecate, work thy will—”</p>
<p>“Enough! With! The fucking! Rats!” Lauren shrieked. She hurled a fireball at Amy with every word, making her sister stop casting her spell so she could shield herself. “You think it was <em>fun</em> being Mom’s favourite? You were there the whole fucking time!”</p>
<p>“This isn’t about being Mom’s favourite!” Amy yelled. “You’re always looking down on me! I have power too!” She caught Lauren’s fire and threw it back at her. Lauren quickly snuffed it out.</p>
<p>“Can’t we stop them?” Thomas asked.</p>
<p>“I don’t think so,” Murphy said.</p>
<p>Spike proved Murphy right when he tried to punch Amy and got thrown through a wall for his trouble. Thomas was the only other person who’d have been able to survive that.</p>
<p>“Any ideas, Wes?” I asked.</p>
<p>“Look for an opening,” Wes said. “And someone ought to distract the police.”</p>
<p>He was right. I could faintly hear sirens getting closer to us. If any cop outside of SI got involved in this it wouldn’t end well.</p>
<p>A bolt of lightning lit up the street as it arced through the air between Lauren and Amy. I couldn’t tell who had cast it and who it was hitting, but none of the rest of us had to scramble to dodge it so it was definitely striking one of them.</p>
<p>There was also the smell of burning flesh, which was something I was familiar with.</p>
<p>I blinked away the spots that filled my vision after the lightning disappeared. There was one more body crumpled on the road.</p>
<p>Lauren turned towards Thomas, who was a dozen feet to my left. Her eyes were still black and dark veins had spread across her face. She was floating a foot above the ground.</p>
<p>“Thomas Raith,” Lauren said. “Camilla said you’re her favourite brother.”</p>
<p>“I’m her only brother,” Thomas said.</p>
<p>A smile pulled at Lauren’s lips but didn’t reach the rest of her face. “Even better. <em>Cor mortem.</em>”</p>
<p>The bolt of red light Lauren threw at Thomas was intercepted by Spike. His collision with the wall had left his left arm bent at several painful angles and blood streaking down the side of his face, but Lauren’s spell didn’t make him look any worse. A second of Latin translation told me why. Spike’s heart couldn’t be stopped when he was already dead.</p>
<p>“Don’t think you want to do that, niblet,” Spike said. “You like Uncle Tommy, remember?”</p>
<p>“Get out of my way,” Lauren growled.</p>
<p>“I will, after you stop trying to get us into a war with the White Court,” Spike said.</p>
<p>Lauren responded with another lightning bolt. It wasn’t as big as the one she’d used on her sister and Spike didn’t seem to be hurt by it at all. I hoped that was because Lauren was running out of power and not because she wasn’t bothering to put in the effort.</p>
<p>The sounds of sirens grew louder. Behind Lauren, Murphy and Wes looked at each other. Murphy seemed startled. Then she nodded and started walking silently away. Witches could do telepathy, couldn’t they? She and Wes had probably come up with a plan.</p>
<p>“Let me kill him,” Lauren said. I heard something else in her tone, begging from beneath the mask of dark magic: <em>Don’t move. Don’t let me kill him. This isn’t me.</em></p>
<p>I stepped into the line of fire. Lightning hit the ground inches from my feet.</p>
<p>“You don’t want to hurt us,” I said.</p>
<p>Lauren shook her head. “Move.”</p>
<p>“You already dropped a building on the bitch,” Spike said. “She’s not going to care what you do to her brother.”</p>
<p>More half-hearted lightning.</p>
<p>“Stop it,” Lauren said weakly. “I’ll kill you, I’ll kill you, I swear I’ll kill you...Oh Goddess. I killed Amy. I killed my <em>sister</em>.”</p>
<p><em>“Dormi,”</em> Wes said.</p>
<p>Lauren collapsed like a marionette whose strings had suddenly been cut. Wes caught her around the waist and steadied her head. While Spike and I had been talking to her, Wes had walked up behind Lauren until he was close enough to grab the back of her head and cast his sleeping spell.</p>
<p>“If one of you would hold her, I should go help Murphy dissuade the authorities,” Wes said.</p>
<p>Thomas stepped forward. “I’ll take her.”</p>
<p>“You ought to keep an eye on the sister,” Spike said. “She somehow gets up from that, we’re going to have a problem.”</p>
<p>“She’s alive?” Wes asked.</p>
<p>Spike and Thomas nodded. That was good to know.</p>
<p>We ended up leaning Lauren against Spike’s shoulder for the same reason that he’d been the one to accompany her to Chicago in the first place, he was the hardest for her to kill. Spike held her up with his unbroken arm while Thomas and I kept a very close eye on Amy. She twitched a few times but didn’t wake up.</p>
<p>Wes came back with Murphy in tow after a few minutes. Murphy was rubbing her forehead like she had a headache. I knew that feeling. The SGWC was good at inducing headaches through pure chaos.</p>
<p>“A clean-up crew should be here soon,” Wes said. “We can head off the FBI as well, if you’d like. Xander enjoys taking cases out from under them. Or was that NCIS?” Wes frowned for a moment before shrugging. “Either way, we’d be happy to help.”</p>
<p>“I’d appreciate that,” Murphy said. “Your people can have this mess. The rest of us are getting drinks.”</p>
<p>Thomas and I couldn’t argue with that.</p>
<hr/>
<p>The SGWC did clean-up the same way they did everything else—looking like a train wreck but working like a well-oiled machine. Xander’s construction crew swarmed the street while a group of witches disappeared with Lauren, Spike, Amy and the two (did the robot count? I was counting it) bodies.</p>
<p>“Man, they did a number on this place.” Xander grinned. “Nice to have a chance to get back to my roots.”</p>
<p>“Will you be free to fight the FBI?” Wes asked. “I need to help Diana make sure no other civilians were harmed.”</p>
<p>“No prob, Wes,” Xander said. “I’ll handle the feds. Dresden and friends can take a break. Drinks, right?”</p>
<p>“Absolutely,” Murphy said.</p>
<p>Xander’s grin grew sharp. “If you hit up Jonathan’s place, tell him I say hi.”</p>
<p>We didn’t end up going to the Bronze because I had just enough of Mac’s ale in my icebox for the three of us. We sat around my table in silence for a few minutes. Even Mouse seemed tired.</p>
<p>“So, is Lauren actually your daughter or was Spike joking?” Murphy asked.</p>
<p>“He wasn’t joking,” I said.</p>
<p>Murphy pursed her lips. “Yeah, I didn’t think so. How long have you known?”</p>
<p>I had to pause for a moment to count. “Nine years? I think it’s been nine years. I’d just gotten my office together when she came to visit. Scared me half to death.”</p>
<p>That had mostly been because Morgan had been monitoring me to find anything to behead me over and a magically created daughter (or having magically modified memories, which was the theory we were working under at the time) would definitely have qualified. I will never miss being under the Doom of Damocles. If I do I’ve been kidnapped and need help.</p>
<p>“You’ve known that long and you didn’t tell me?” Thomas complained.</p>
<p>I took a sip of my beer. “It never came up. We’ve both got enemies and it was safer to let it lie.”</p>
<p>Thomas frowned. “That’s fair.”</p>
<p>Darn right it was. Thomas should know about having enemies.</p>
<p>“Do you have any other secret family members I should know about?” Murphy asked.</p>
<p>“Pretty sure I don’t,” I said.</p>
<p>We finished our drinks. Murphy agreed to stay what was left of the night when she stood up and nearly fell over from exhaustion. It had been a long day.</p>
<p>Murphy called my office the next day to let me know that the FBI had grudgingly accepted the SGWC’s case closed order. Agent Booth hadn’t needed to be ordered to let it go but he had left his contact information with Murphy “just in case”.</p>
<p>“Xander said something about keeping him,” Murphy said.</p>
<p>“He wants to read him in?” I asked. “Weird.”</p>
<p>I still didn’t trust the FBI, but Agent Booth hadn’t gotten anyone killed, which was nice. Didn’t seem like the basis for letting him in on one of the biggest secrets in the history of the world, but I’m pretty sure the SGWC does through background checks.</p>
<p>I could practically hear Murphy shrug. “It could be useful. I wouldn’t mind having more people to help deal with this stuff.”</p>
<p>I had to agree with that. We badly needed more Wardens.</p>
<p>My phone rang again a few seconds after Murphy and I finished talking. I answered quickly. There was paperwork I was busy procrastinating.</p>
<p>“Hi, Dad,” Lauren said. Her voice sounded rough, like she’d been gargling gravel.</p>
<p>“Hey. How are you doing?” I asked.</p>
<p>“I have a headache and a fever and everything hurts,” she said. “But I’m not trying to end the world, so it’s of the good.”</p>
<p>For anyone else that would be a low bar. For the SGWC it was a normal Monday.</p>
<p>“That’s good,” I said. “Are you back in Cleveland?”</p>
<p>“No, I’m off Hellmouth rotation pending review in September. I’m in London, but I’m probably going to stay with the Devon Coven for the rest of the summer. I...” Lauren sighed. “I need the help. Quitting is hard and this is a big setback.”</p>
<p>“You’re going to be okay,” I said. “You’ve got a lot of people in your corner.”</p>
<p>“I nearly killed Amy,” she said.</p>
<p>“You’ve got a lot of people in your corner,” I repeated. “We’re here for you.”</p>
<p>Noticeable silence was followed by a muffled sob.</p>
<p>“Love you, Dad,” Lauren spoke so quietly that I almost didn’t hear her.</p>
<p>I smiled. “Love you too, kid.”</p>
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